Opinion | The Teenager Leading the Smartphone Liberation Movement

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and [email protected] any questions.

From New York Times Opinion, I’m Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and this is “First Person.”

So at the end of the week, my smartphone tells me how much time I spent on it each day. And I never fail to be shocked and horrified by the tally — six hours, seven hours. I mean, really? What was I doing for all that time?

It’s a kind of fog. And I sometimes wonder what life would look like if I just got rid of my phone. 17-year-old Logan Lane did just that. She’s a high school senior, and she grew up in Brooklyn but also on the internet, as kids do in our technology saturated world.

Then a little over two years ago, Logan started questioning whether living a life of constant connection was actually a good thing. And she made a dramatic decision to ditch her smartphone. Then she started a club to try and convince her peers to do the same. The aftermath has been surprising both to her and to me. Today on “First Person,” Logan Lane unplugs.

Hi, Logan, how are you?

I’m good. How are you?

I’m great. Thank you. Are you nervous?

A little bit.

I can tell. Don’t feel nervous. I am going to turn off my camera. I just wanted you to see me first, so you can put a face to the voice, if that’s OK.

Yeah, that’s fine.

Great. So here we go. Can you tell me about how you got your own smartphone? How old were you?

I think I was — I remember I first got a flip phone in fifth grade, but I believe I got a smartphone in sixth grade. So I was about 11. I remember being just so excited. I think right when I first got a phone, I also got Instagram for the first time. And I was very excited about it.

I guess around 11 is pretty normal now for kids to get smartphones. Did your online habits change once you were able to have this device in your pocket?

So I mean, I think it introduced the aspect of falling asleep with my phone by my side. I could never do that with the computer because it was a desktop, but so now I could have it on-demand at all times. And so I had complete control over it. And my immediate impulse was to use it all the time. And so I was always texting my 11-year-old friends and mindlessly scrolling.

Mm. Did it shift your social group when everyone started to get smartphones and use social media? I mean, did it change the way your friends interacted with each other?

It introduced this whole new world of people to me who had gone to a different elementary school. And interestingly enough, there kind of became this popular group that arised on Instagram. It wasn’t in real life, and it wasn’t people that I knew or would have known if I wasn’t on Instagram.

And I definitely really looked up to them. And I heard this rumor that five or six girls from a bunch of different elementary schools, they reached out to each other in this big Instagram group chat. And they were like, we are going to be the popular girls at school.

How does that work, do you think, to sort of decide on social media to become popular?

I feel like it was the people who were — they were sort of pretty first really early on in sixth and seventh grade. It was the people who had boyfriends first and who dressed well.

Uh-huh. So they were kind of Instagram-ready, if you will.

Totally.

Yeah. And what did it — what did it feel like for you to be watching your peers, essentially, that you might not have had access to before become really cool? How did that impact you in your friend group?

I just felt really weird in comparison to them. And a part of me really wanted to emulate this aspect of popularity, but then another part of me was totally against it. Oh, like, I don’t care about popularity. I don’t know. It felt like I went to this reality high that did not exist.

Hmm. And can you describe to me what you were like when you were on Instagram? What was your social media presence?

So I was always kind of rejecting Instagram. And I would over-post. I remember in seventh or eighth grade, posting literally 10 or 11 weird, not flattering selfies on my story — on my Instagram story — and kind of rejecting the flattering aspects of Instagram.

Yeah.

Yet I was still going on it, which was weird because I was over-posting — it was this thing called casual Instagram, where you would post whatever and seemingly not care, but you were still posting. So I put off this persona of not caring.

So like, too cool to care.

Totally. Yeah.

After you got your smartphone, I mean, were there ever stretches of time when you didn’t have it, or once you had it, was it just attached to you?

So when I was in seventh grade, I lost my phone. I think I left it on the bus. And so I had a good four months without a phone. And it was really, really nice for me.

And interestingly enough, it was during this period that I first started rejecting Instagram. And my best friend at the time and I would — I would give her my password, and she would change it. And so I couldn’t go on Instagram for a week or a couple weeks or so. And then another strategy I used is I would temporarily deactivate my Instagram account.

And sometimes I just remember temporarily deactivating it and being like, oh, my god, I just want to go on Instagram. Why did I do this? One moment being completely, completely anti-Instagram and ready to never see it again, and then what was so embarrassing was that I wanted it back very soon after.

Mm-hmm. What happens when you get into high school? Did things change at that point?

So it felt like my life totally transformed when I went to high school because all the sudden, I went to a huge high school with 4,000 kids in it. And a lot of the kids had gone to this other middle school that I was constantly looking at on social media. And it was like this reality high that I built was finally in person.

And part of me was really excited, but I felt like I was always acting. I was being this person on social media. And then in person at school, I had to emulate that because people were actually seeing me.

And I really carried on this “I don’t care” persona at the time. I remember posting pictures of my feet in the bathtub or just really weird, unflattering things to kind of gross people out. Maybe part of me was making fun of Instagram, but this was the period, I feel like, where I cared the most, interestingly enough.

Before, you were in this more closed-in environment, but now you’re in the big world of high school, where all of a sudden, everyone can see you and who you are.

Yeah. I’d get on the train to school — and getting on the train to school is like, everyone from the school takes the same train because it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. And that always felt like it was the runway. Being on the train before school was like the runway, and it was like the social media in-person collision because all of a sudden, you see everyone from school in this one concentrated environment. You won’t necessarily see them in all your classes, but you definitely will on the train in the morning.

And what’s everyone doing? Is everyone staring at their phone, looking at what everyone else has posted?

Yes.

Hmm. What was your life when you weren’t online?

So I did a lot of painting at this time. I remember staying up — one of these times that I pulled an all-nighter and stayed up all night, I did a self-portrait of me and some mushrooms, which I look back at and hate now. But I crocheted also. But no matter what I did, it was all to support the social media presence.

And I posted so much of my art online. If I did something that I was proud of, I would 100 percent post it. If I sewed something or knitted something that I liked, I would post it and be like, look at this cool thing I made. And I would get some sort of approval that really felt good, but it was almost like I did it knowing that I was going to post it later on.

You talked about a period when you lost your phone and having this on-again, off-again relationship with Instagram and other social media chats. When did you start to really worry about how much time you were spending on your phone once you hit high school?

It was in the start of the pandemic. I had unlimited access. And I, for the first time, felt like I could be on my screens 24 hours a day. All of my school was online. And during all my classes, I would be using my phone.

After my classes, I would be using my phone.

I saw for the first time what it was like to be completely unleashed into the online world. [UPBEAT MUSIC]

And it was honestly really depressing.

Hmm. Just to ask you a question about the before and after this moment, what were the physical effects of being on your phone all the time? Can you describe those?

So physically, I could not sleep. My sleep schedule was terrible. It was not regulated, and I would stay up late most nights. I also developed this indent on my fingers, where I would be holding my phone because I was just so frequently scrolling with my hands in a particular position that my fingers started shifting.

And I think the rest of it’s pretty — it’s all more emotional than physical. But to go into that, I was just blatantly unsatisfied with myself. I was constantly seeing something better that I could be, someone prettier, someone more artistic, and I developed this level of shame about who I wasn’t.

Mm-hmm. And what was going on for you that led you to think about getting rid of your phone?

I think it came to a head at me examining the time trade because I think when I started to realize that the pandemic was going to be a longer thing than I had initially expected, I would see other people doing reading challenges or knitting, just using the extra time for some artistic activity. And I felt like I was the type of person who ought to be doing that, but I wasn’t. I was wasting it on TikTok or Instagram. I felt for myself, if I was going to be productive, I needed to take a step back from the phone.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Take me to the moment when you were like, actually, yeah, this isn’t working.

So honestly, I don’t remember what was going through my head. But I kind of made this grand walk of shame down the stairs to my parents’ room. And I remember calling to my dad in the other room, like, I’m really doing it. I’m never using my phone again.

And I had powered it off, and I put it in this drawer in my parents’ room. And my dad was making fun of me. He was like, there’s no way this is going to last. You’re going to go back to it in a couple days.

And a part of me really wanted to prove him wrong because while I knew I was this super screen-addicted teenager, I wanted to be different. I wanted to use all my time productively and to make something. And so even if I wasn’t doing it at the time, I had those ambitions. And so inevitably I just kept up with it.

So you put your phone in a box. What did that actually mean, though? I mean, for example, could you still text your friends? Did you access the internet on a computer? What did that look like?

So I still had an Apple computer at the time. So I still had an iCloud account. While I was still able to text, there was a difference between being able to text and being completely plugged in on social media. So —

You turned off your social media at the same time.

Yeah. So I deactivated Instagram, TikTok, and then I permanently deactivated my Snapchat account as well.

Hmm. That’s a huge life change.

Yeah.

Was part of you scared about how it would go?

I guess a part of me, even from the beginning, felt like the major thing was I was going to lose friends. I was going to lose these connections I built with people online. But I also felt like if they didn’t stay — if people weren’t willing to stay in touch with me over email or over my iCloud, then I didn’t want anything to do with them. So I was pretty quick to reject anyone who didn’t support or want to stay in touch with me, even though it was a little bit more difficult for them.

I mean, did that happen?

Definitely.

Talk me through what the fallout was.

People kind of started to describe me as like, Logan fell off the face of the earth. I would run into them, and they’d be like, oh, my god, I haven’t seen you in so long. I’d be like, yeah, I got a flip phone. And it was really weird because I felt like I totally changed.

And so on one hand, I wasn’t connected with people, but then when I would run into them again, it was like I was a totally different person. And the person that they had met was someone who was really plugged in, and maybe they liked that about me. And I wasn’t anymore.

I’m interested in this idea of Logan fell off the face of the earth because you’re no longer on these social media accounts. It’s like a social death almost.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So you’re suddenly in a world where the internet is not with you everywhere. And I think life without a smartphone is something a lot of us have fantasized about. I mean, I certainly have. And actually, it’s kind of hard to imagine what that looks like. Can you walk me through what those early days without a phone look like?

So I would go up early. I started waking up early. And I guess that was just a side effect of not falling asleep with a phone next to me into the late hours of the night. So I woke up, and I would make some coffee. And then I would have to get on my Zooms for school.

And one thing that changed was I wasn’t multitasking while I was in the Zooms. I wasn’t distracted. And so rather than scroll on Instagram during the Zooms, I started knitting and crocheting during my Zoom calls, so it was like I replaced it in a sense.

And then let’s say school ends around 12:00, 1:00, 2:00. And I do feel I started to think more about — I’ve never been very good about feeding myself, but I started to think more about food and like, OK, now I actually have to eat lunch. I can’t just have some snack.

And then I would have five, six hours to kill before dinner. And I would be actually excited about having dinner with my family, which I wasn’t before because I was like, this is just taking away from my screen time. I think at this time, I really started making my own pants.

And so I started doing this thing of merging two pairs of pants, where I would cut out these triangles and just patch them together. And I got really good at that, but I also — I started reading. And so maybe I would spend the afternoon reading or doing some sort of art project.

What were you reading?

So the first book I read was “Collages” by Anais Nin. And to this day, that book —

Great book.

— blows me away.

Great book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’m so appreciative of that book because it really, really got me into reading. I’d always wanted to be a reader, but I just wasn’t. And for the first time, I found something that could engage me more than watching TV could.

The way you’re describing this, it sounds like it was mostly really positive. Was there anything that was hard to adjust to?

I was really lonely. And so it was hard to find people to talk to. I guess I could still FaceTime, but I think I was really only talking to one person. Honestly, I was much more extroverted before this whole experiment, but I kind of grew more introverted as a result.

And I started to feel less like I needed people. I less needed people’s approval. I less needed people’s company. And I think I closed my circle a little bit more, which ended up being really positive because I felt like I could focus more on my friendships and be really intentional about who I let stay in my life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

After the break, Logan starts the Luddite Club.

So you’ve transformed your life during the pandemic to get rid of your phone. All of a sudden, you are having essentially a burst of creativity. You’re also engaging in reading in your school. You’re enjoying actually having meals with your family, and you’re sleeping better.

How did this turn into something bigger? How did you end up spreading the no-phone gospel to other teens through what you call the Luddite Club? Take me back to how it started.

So we first went back to school in 2021 — in September, October of 2021. And that was really great for me. I was super excited to be back at school. And it was almost as if I relived my initial freshman year, except completely transformed. And I was seeing all these people that I had known on social media and whatnot, and I was seeing them in a different light.

When you’re saying you’re seeing these people that you had followed and admired on Instagram before in a different light now that you had stopped using your phone, can you tell me what that meant?

I lost a lot of respect for them. I had sort of put them on a pedestal before, whereas I — they sort of fell down a notch. I was like, wow, this person is not that cool.

So you’re back at school. Take me back to the club. I mean, what is the club’s origin story?

So I had heard about a punk show in Prospect Park that was happening one weekend. A couple of bands — Disaster Nurse and the Cut Ups played. And I really enjoyed it. And I ran into someone who was on the cross-country team, which I was the captain of at the time.

And she introduced me to one of her good friends, who had a flip phone. And I was totally blown away. I was like, oh, my god, I have been waiting to run into a person like this for the longest time. Finally, here is someone who feels the same way about me — as me — and is pursuing this lifestyle the same way as I am. And we immediately hit it off.

We ended up going to this after-party together afterwards and really bonded. She was a freshman, but she was so well-read. And I almost saw she was who I could have been in an alternate universe freshman year if I hadn’t been on my phone and hadn’t been on social media. And she was this really amazing person, but I didn’t get any of her contact information. I didn’t get her email. I didn’t get anything. But a couple weeks later, I was walking around the central library — this is the big library in Brooklyn — and I ran into her again. And I was so excited to see her again. And we ended up walking around the art and music section of the library. And then later, we walked through — it was a Saturday, so we walked through the farmer’s market and got apples and apple cider donuts.

This seems like this is really vivid for you.

Oh, yeah. And turns out, she has been wanting to meet someone just like me the same way. And it just came over us that we wanted to start some sort of club where we could do just what we had done that day. So I got her email, and we decided to meet the next Sunday.

And I think I came back that Sunday after having talked to my mom. And my mom was the one who came up with the term Luddite — Luddite Club. She just introduced me to what the term meant. And so we had our second meeting.

So your mom gives you the name the Luddite Club. For people who may not know what it is, can you tell me what it is?

So Luddite is a person who rejects technology. There’s a lot of different forms. And throughout history, there’s been different variations of it. But to me, now, it means rejecting social media, rejecting phones, rejecting the sort of personal machine that has plagued all of us.

So at first, it was just the two of you. And you come up with this idea to just have a lovely day, like you did then, and have a regular meetup. How often did you end up meeting, and where?

So we met every Sunday then onwards. And it quickly became this group. And partly, being a Luddite felt really lonely, and it was so great to go connect with people, and particularly people who felt the same way about screens and who lived the same lifestyle every single week at a certain time.

[CAR HORNS HONKING]

You’ve been meeting with the club for a little over a year now. Walk me through a typical meeting of the Luddite Club.

How many people show up? How do you spend your time? Just kind of take me through it.

So Luddites are frequently late, which personally is a pet peeve of mine.

And then finally, we have everyone arrive. Usually, it can range anywhere from four to, in what we call the offseason, which is the summertime — four to 15 people. And then whenever we feel everyone has arrived —

We go into the park. Prospect Park, there’s an entrance right near the library.

[CHATTER]

We have a special meeting place that we go. And we all go, and we sit in a circle.

The Luddite Club as — I think one of the members described to me once is — it’s the combination of a bunch of conversations.

[CHATTER]

You talk to someone about how they’re doing, and then you start talking about how you feel about a book.

And then you start talking about how someone’s feeling about being in school and how everyone makes fun of them for having a flip phone.

So it’s sort of interweaving conversations. Usually, it’s like an hour to two hours. Sometimes it leads into other things. Like, this one time we went to the beach. Another time we went to our friend’s pool.

Another time we went to a Jeffrey Lewis concert. That was the longest Luddite Club. It was 12 hours’ long.

And really, it’s just like a group of friends talking.

And all the while, people are painting. People are sewing and drawing and just kind of existing in nature for a little bit.

Do people show up who are skeptical?

Everyone who comes starts off — it’s, like, a skeptical member. And they sort of hear the gospel for a little bit. Some stay. Some don’t. And eventually, for people who end up staying, they come back next week. And they’re like, wow, I’ve been really thinking about what we talked about last week, and I really want to make this big change in my life. Or I’ve decided to get off social media. Or I’m really trying to convince my parents to let me get a flip phone.

And first, [? Odela ?] got a flip phone. And then Lola did, and Baruch did. Then Max did. Then [? Jonah ?] did.

And so every few weeks, a few people would come back and be like, look what I got. And we would just continue on. We would keep having conversations, keep drawing. And yeah.

Has anyone ever tried out the Luddite lifestyle and then gone back?

Yes. So interestingly enough, one of the first members, she was Luddite for a little bit. She never got a flip phone. She just had an iPhone. But then I think she got a boyfriend, and she went back on Instagram.

What was that like for you?

It was really sad. I really miss her coming to Luddite Club. But I also feel like people have the right to make their own decisions. If that lifestyle works for her, that’s awesome. And so I do feel upset about it, but she’s young.

She’s a sophomore now. And maybe she still has time to see, or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she has an OK relationship with technology, unlike all of us. You know what I mean?

Hmm. Can you just tell me how the friendships that you’ve made in the Luddite Club are different from the way your friendships were before?

Yeah, so the people I know in the Luddite Club might — the way that I see them and the knowledge I have of them is completely offline. There’s no premeditated Instagram knowledge, and there’s no me knowing things about them that they don’t know that I know. So they share what they want to share, et cetera.

And I think it’s also made me more appreciative of attendance. I really like when people show up. And so of the friends that show up, I value that heavily. And the thing about the Luddite Club is people show up, and they show up every week. And it’s made me more appreciative of the physical act of showing up somewhere for someone.

You said earlier that often when people come to the club, they hear the gospel. Is this just something fun you do with your friends because it feels good and it’s nice to spend time together, or does it feel like something bigger than that, a movement?

So I think this is definitely something I’ve been thinking about. I think the unplugging and the getting offline is 100 percent something bigger and something that hopefully this generation will take on, particularly as we become parents. I know I have some regrets about how early I got my phone and how early this addiction was instilled in me. And I can hope that my generation as parents will be able to better manage our kids and give them technology at appropriate ages, unlike the super young ages that I and my peers have gotten them.

As I’m hearing you talk, I’m feeling a lot of shame — I won’t lie — as a mother because we as parents do give our kids these devices. But they’ve become such a ubiquitous part of our lives that it’s hard to separate ourselves from how we interact with our phones.

I do feel like the restrictions — the parental restrictions — also aren’t necessarily successful all the time. I see the exact same things that my parents implemented, which really were not that insane measures of restricting, did not succeed whatsoever with my brother. And so maybe it’s not even about what your parents do, but it’s the general feeling of the generation, how we hold back technology from its reliance in our life. Maybe it’s not something your parents can do for you, but the way that you can see the device and how that is in your life, whether you’re a parent or you’re a kid or a teenager or whatnot.

You need to come to this yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah. Fair. Have you ever thought about trying to find a middle ground with your smartphone, using it more intentionally but not getting rid of it altogether? Luddite lite, if you will.

I definitely think it’s possible for some people. But from what I’ve experienced, I don’t feel like it’s possible for me right now. And oftentimes, people describe to me how they’re actually really good about their smartphone, and they can use it in moderation.

And that is so admirable. And I really, really wish I could do it. I don’t feel like with my relationship with technology that I could do it. And particularly as a teenager, I don’t feel like I can do it. So for me, the Luddite lite lifestyle isn’t optimal. But for others, 100 percent it’s a possibility.

How much of a purist, though, are you? I mean, because there are certain things that are much harder without a smartphone, like calling an Uber. I mean, do you end up borrowing other people’s phones or have people do things for you?

So when we went to the — I mentioned one Luddite Club, we went to a Jeffrey Lewis show. And then it ended up being really late. It was, like, 12:00.

So at that point, I just called my parents, and they called me an Uber. And so that is one thing that I won’t be able to do when I’m older. But hopefully, I think as I get older, I can try and avoid situations like that.

Do you think it’s going to get harder and harder, though, as technology just invades so many different spaces in our life when you try and do that thought experiment about when you’re older?

I definitely fear that. And I notice when I go to a restaurant and the menus are completely barcoded and I have to look on my parent’s phone — I fear that with technology becoming more and more prominent in every aspect that it will be more and more difficult. I don’t know how I’ll feel about being a Luddite in the future. I don’t know what that’ll mean to the job market, if I’ll even be able to work.

Right now it’s working for me as a 17-year-old. Maybe it won’t work for me in college. I am hoping that I’ll be able to be a Luddite in college, but I remember my brother actually telling me you needed some sort of two-step verification for logging in to a school account that — there was a time when I didn’t have a phone at all, and I just could not be a student in college if I didn’t have that. So yeah, I do fear that there’s some level of technology completely taking over, making it not possible for me to be a Luddite and still exist in the working world.

Let me ask you this. Do you read a physical newspaper instead of getting news on your apps, or do you use your computer to watch TV? I mean, how are you actually engaging in the political world?

I think I get my news mostly from my dad. My dad reads the newspaper every morning. And at dinner, he’ll give me the 411. And I don’t feel like I’m as in tune, but I think I’m more emotionally well because I’m not constantly tuned in to what’s going on in the world and what politics are happening and having a crisis every time something happens.

And as someone coming of age, being in high school during the Trump presidency, knowing every single little thing that Trump did, did not feel productive to me. And it would make me really upset. And I felt like while maybe I’d be more in tune if I was getting my news from Instagram, it felt like — I feel embarrassed to say that was my primary news outlet.

When you think back to the person you were three years ago, how are you different now?

I definitely feel smarter, and lesser so an intelligent sense, but smarter in the sense that I’m more intentional about what I choose to include in my life. I definitely feel more confident. My social anxiety has gone down. I also — I do feel like I have more of a grasp on reality, whereas I was living in a sort of fantasy world before.

Do you think you’ll be a Luddite forever?

I honestly don’t know. I hope so.

Why?

Because I fear what will become of the authentic me when or if I get back online.

I fear that I’ll lose a part of myself. Maybe I’ll lose a part of my youth, which maybe that’s just growing up. But I fear losing that self in a way that I felt I lost it when I was online years ago.

And so you think that if this goes away, this part of yourself that you’ve discovered, that’ll also go away — kind of get sucked back into the machine.

Yeah.

Logan, thank you so much. This was so great.

Thank you so much.

[MUSIC]

“First Person” is a production of New York Times Opinion. Please tell us what you thought of this episode. Our email is [email protected] And please, do leave us a review wherever you’re listening.

This episode was produced by Rhiannon Corby with help from Anabel Bacon. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Kaari Pitkin. Alex Vadukul originally wrote about the “Luddite Club” for The Times. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud.

Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. The rest of the “First Person” team includes Olivia Natt, Wyatt Orme, Sofia Alvarez Boyd, Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Shannon Busta, Allison Benedikt, Annie-Rose Strasser and Katie Kingsbury.